BushLines privacy policy
In short
BushLines works offline and collects nothing about you. Only two things ever go over the internet, and only when you choose: a problem report that you write yourself, and the photos of a plant you ask BushLines to identify. Neither carries your name, email address, account, location or device identifier.
What stays on your phone
The encyclopedia, its photos, your stars, notes and settings are stored only on your phone. If Android’s backup is on, Android may copy your stars, notes and settings to your own Google account, under Google’s terms; we never receive that copy. Deleting the app deletes the data.
Your finds — their photos, the place each was made, your notes on them and the species you picked — are stored only on your phone too, and are left out of Android’s backup. They never leave the phone, so they go if you delete the app or change phones.
Problem reports
A flag at the top of every species and method page, and a line in Settings, let you report a problem. A report is sent only when you tap Send in the report form; if your phone is offline, it waits on your phone and is sent the next time the app starts. A report contains:
- the category you pick and the note you type (please do not put personal details in it);
- what was on the page: the species or method, its names, the photo on show and where it came from, the section you were reading, which sections were open, and the month the app was showing;
- the app version and the Android version number.
It does not contain your name, email address, phone number, location, contacts, photos, any account, advertising ID or device ID.
Reports travel over an encrypted connection (HTTPS) directly to the report server at perankh.hrana.app, which BushLines shares with Per Ankh, made by the same people; each report is marked as BushLines’. The server is hosted by Akamai Cloud (Linode), and no other company sees the contents. It keeps no record of where a report came from: it writes no access log, and holds your network address in memory only to limit how often reports can be sent. Server error logs, kept for up to 14 days for security, may contain network addresses.
We use reports only to find and fix problems in BushLines. We never sell them, share them, use them for advertising, or combine them with other data.
Identifying a plant
The Finds tab can suggest what a plant is from photos of it. Nothing is sent until you tap Identify. Then the photos of that one plant — up to five, which the app first shrinks to 1,280 pixels and saves again without their camera data, so any location in a gallery photo stays behind — and what you said each one shows (flower, leaf, fruit or bark) travel over an encrypted connection (HTTPS) to the server at perankh.hrana.app. It passes them to Pl@ntNet (my-api.plantnet.org), a plant identification service run by French research institutes, and sends back Pl@ntNet’s suggestions. If your phone is offline, the find waits on your phone and is sent the next time BushLines is open with a connection.
Our server holds the photos in memory only while it waits for Pl@ntNet’s answer; it does not store or log them. It counts how many identifications are made each day — a number, not who made them — to stay within Pl@ntNet’s free allowance, and, as for reports, holds network addresses in memory only to limit how often requests can be made. Pl@ntNet’s terms say the photos it receives are kept only in its servers’ memory while they are identified, and are not stored; it records the date and time of each query, against BushLines’ account rather than anything about you.
The place a find was made, your notes and the species you pick never leave your phone. BushLines asks for the camera when you first open the viewfinder, and once, the first time, for your location, which it uses only to record where a find was made. You can refuse either: the gallery still works, and finds are kept without a place.
How long we keep reports
A report is kept while the problem is open, and deleted within 12 months of being closed. A copy stays on your phone, in the app’s own folder, until the app is uninstalled. Because reports are anonymous we cannot find “your” reports; if you want one deleted, tell us roughly when you sent it and what it said, and we will remove it.
Children
BushLines is a general-audience field guide and is not directed at children under 13. It does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone.
Changes and contact
If a future version collects more, this policy will be updated before that version is released, and the feature will be optional. For questions and requests, including deleting a report, the quickest way to reach us is a report from the app: the flag at the top right of any species or method page, or Report a problem with the app in Settings. You can also write to support@hrana.app.